Author: Sonia Lenegan

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Sonia Lenegan

Sonia Lenegan is an experienced immigration, asylum and public law solicitor. She has been practising for over ten years and was previously legal director at the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association and legal and policy director at Rainbow Migration. Sonia is the Editor of Free Movement.

In a decision that forced me to google Pericles (an ancient Greek politician) and Santayana (a Spanish-American philosopher) the First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) has allowed an appeal relating to the Home Office’s refusal to disclose the report on “The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal”. This is the second...

27th September 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The report into the Rwanda country policy and information notes by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has finally been published. The Rwanda scheme may be over, and the relevant country notes withdrawn shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision but as I pointed out last week, there are...

23rd September 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

A new commentary by Asylos, in partnership with Rainbow Migration, has considered the Home Office’s country policy and information note on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in Georgia and identified various assertions on risk that are inconsistent with or unsupported by the country evidence elsewhere in the note....

18th September 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

In this post I explain the variety of reasons that it is a very bad idea to submit a fee waiver application purely for the purpose of getting section 3C leave, with no eligibility for or intention of making the subsequent immigration application mentioned in the fee waiver application. The...

17th September 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

An applicant has successfully challenged the Home Office’s refusal of his application for further leave to remain in the old Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) route after obvious errors were made both procedurally and in the refusal letter. The case is R (on the application of Ghadam) v Secretary of State for...

16th September 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

Biometric residence permits (BRPs), all issued with expiry dates no later than the end of December 2024, are being replaced with “eVisas“. To get their eVisa, people need to register and set up an online account (see our step by step guide for help with this) so that they can...

13th September 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The autumn statement of changes HC 217 has been published, accompanied by a written statement from Seema Malhotra MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Migration and Citizenship. The errors we covered last week in relation to skilled worker going rates are being corrected from 8 October 2024 and we...

10th September 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

Barry joins Sonia again this month to look back at what happened in August. We cover the latest statistics on asylum, immigration and trafficking. There are a couple of cases relating to asylum family reunion, as well as a policy change for those separated during Operation Pitting. Other cases covered...

9th September 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The roll out of eVisas is likely to have the biggest adverse impact on those people who hold a “legacy” document, i.e. evidence of their immigration status that was issued before the introduction of biometric residence permits. One of the reasons for this is that there is an additional step...

5th September 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory has unsuccessfully appealed a grant of bail allowing the small group of people seeking asylum on Diego Garcia to access certain parts of the island. The case is The Commissioner v The King (on the application of VT & Ors) (No. 3)...

29th August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan